Shiva Ayyadurai, left, a 2020 Massachusetts Republican U.S. Senate candidate, appears in a podcast with alt-right white nationalist Jean-Francois Gariepy in May 2018, when Ayyadurai was running for U.S. Senate as an independent. Screenshot of video.
Belmont resident Shiva Ayyadurai has done something many political candidates would never dare to — let alone in a liberal bastion like Massachusetts.
Ayyadurai, who is running for U.S. Senate as a Republican, publicly associates with alt-right personalities. The alt-right is a loose term that describes people who eschew mainstream conservatism in favor of white nationalism. And the Massachusetts Republican Party has not said anything about it yet.
Ayyadurai, an Indian immigrant, who favors amnesty for some illegal immigrants, is not a member of the alt-right himself. He has criticized racism, he has not spoken in alt-right racial terms during his appearances, and he has stood with people holding signs that said “Black Lives DO Matter,” for instance. However, Ayyadurai has associated with alt-right figures multiple times while running for political office.
One of these instances occurred in February 2018, when Ayyadurai participated in a video with a Unite the Right marcher.
Ayyadurai recorded a video with Southborough native Matthew Colligan, who goes by Millennial Matt and Moustache Matt. Ayyadurai called him “one of our great supporters” and called him a “phenomenal video editor.”
Colligan participated in the August 2017 Charlottesville protests against taking down Confederate memorials, which led to clashes with left-of-center counter-protesters, including an alt-right protester who drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one of them.
Colligan received attention for taking videos with people such as U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and actor Shia LeBeouf and saying “Hitler did nothing wrong,” as Middleboro Review points out. (Colligan, who previously campaigned in favor of wider access to abortion, has described his statement as edgy comedy.) The same month that Ayyadruai recorded the video, Colligan appeared on a YouTube stream with a Nazi flag.
A few months later, Ayyadurai made an hour-long appearance on a YouTube show hosted by Jean-François Gariépy, a French-Canadian supporter of creating a white ethno-state. During this appearance on Gariépy’s show, The Public Space, Ayyadurai repeatedly used the N-word, after noting that someone had used it against him, and encouraged listeners to use the word as a form of reclaiming it in a different context, saying “We’re all [n——-] on the white Deep State reservation.”
In the same episode where Ayyadurai made an appearance, Gariépy’s next guest was neo-Nazi Patrick Little, who is currently running for president on a platform of expelling all Jews from the United States. At the time, Little was a U.S. Senate candidate in California.
Gariépy spoke positively of Ayyadurai to Little (in this video, starting at 2:21:23).
“He seems like a based Indian guy who actually, pretty much without naming Jewish supremacism the way you do, pretty much told us right here that there is an elite controlling Harvard University, there is an elite controlling Elizabeth Warren, controlling the media, and that is there to undermine their power,” Gariépy said.
Other notable guests on Gariépy’s podcast have included former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and alt-right white nationalist Richard Spencer.
Ayyadurai’s appearance came on May 27, 2018, according to IMDb, an online database of movies, programs, and videos.
Ayyadurai presents himself as anti-establishment, pro-Trump, and against genetically modified organism methods of producing food. He has criticized agricultural biotechnology, including the genetic engineering of crops practiced by the former American company Monsanto (acquired in June 2018 by Bayer).
In January 2018 Ayyadurai’s campaign announced that it would be producing groyper pins. They showed Ayyadurai in groyper form and read, “SHIVA 4 SENATE. NO TO MONSANTO.”
A groyper is a cartoon toad whose popularity originates from the /pol/ section of 4Chan, a hub for anonymous alt-right posting. It’s a variant of the Pepe the Frog, which is also an image associated with the alt-right.
The pins are not available on Ayyadurai’s campaign web site, but he has promoted them on his official Twitter account twice (in November and December) during this election cycle.
This past April, he did a YouTube stream with Freedomain radio founder Stefan Molyneux. YouTube banned Molyneux, Spencer, and Duke this past June for violating the site’s hate speech policy, as Business Insider points out.
In December 2018, Molyneux praised Poland for its whiteness, saying, “I’ve always been skeptical of the ideas of white nationalism, of identitarianism, and white identity. However, I am an empiricist and I could not help but notice that I could have peaceful, free, easy, civilized and safe discussions in what is essentially an all-white country.”
Additionally, Ayyadurai has made several appearances on InfoWars programming, including The Alex Jones Show. Although not alt-right, Jones was best known in the 2000s for promoting the 9/11 conspiracy theory. The InfoWars store sells a shirt that says “9/11 Was An Inside Job.”
Ayyadurai also appeared on RT, a Russian state-funded media network, earlier this year.
Former state Representative Geoff Diehl (R-Whitman), who was the Massachusetts Republican Party’s U.S. Senate nominee in 2018, ran against U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ayyudurai in November 2018.
Diehl told New Boston Post in an email message that Ayyadurai’s media appearances do not surprise him.
“I’m not surprised by Ayyadurai’s despicable associations,” Diehl wrote. “He also has a long, well-documented history of volatile behavior and outrageous claims. Shiva Ayyadurai lacks the temperament to serve in public office.”
Wendy Wakeman, the communications director for Dover attorney Kevin O’Connor’s campaign, the other Republican in the race, said Ayyadurai’s media appearances are among many reasons why Ayyadurai shouldn’t be the GOP nominee.
“Perennial candidate Ayyardurai, who claims to have invented the internet, doesn’t just have skeletons in his closet,” she wrote. “He lives in a macabre funhouse stuffed with the bones of outrageous claims, unsavory associations, and violent, irrational behavior.”
Ayyadurai says he invented email during the 1970s, which has been disputed.
Ayyadurai’s platform calls for improving infrastructure, investing in scientific research, ensuring First Amendment rights online, and cutting health care costs. He has also pledged to only serve one term, if elected to the Senate.
Ayyadurai could not be reached for comment for this story.
The Massachusetts Republican Party could not be reached for comment for this story. Nor could the campaigns for Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Ed Markey and Joseph P. Kennedy III.
Shiva Ayyadurai, left, a 2020 Massachusetts Republican U.S. Senate candidate, appears in a podcast with alt-right white nationalist Jean-Francois Gariepy in May 2018, when Ayyadurai was running for U.S. Senate as an independent. Screenshot of video. 
